1835.] Authorities on Buddhism. 35 



with untonsured followers, who now present themselves for the first time. 

 I pretend not to trace with historical nicety all the changes which 

 marked the progress of Buddhism as a public institute and creed of 

 millions up to the period of the dispersion : but I am well aware, that the 

 primitive doctrines were not, because they could not be, rigidly adhered 

 to, when what I hold to have been at first the closet speculation of 

 some philosophers, had become the dominant creed of large kingdoms. 

 That the latter character was, however, assumed by Buddhism in the 

 plains of India, long before the dispersion, seems certain ; and, as many 

 persons may urge that the thing in question is the dominant public 

 institute, not the closet speculation, and that whatever discipline pre- 

 vailed before the dispersion must be held for primitive and orthodox, I 

 can only observe that the ancient books of the Sangatas, whilst they 

 glance at such changes as I have adverted to, do so in the language o* 

 censure ; and that upon the whole, I still strongly incline to the opinion 

 that genuine or primitive Buddhism (so I cautiously phrased it, origi- 

 nally) rejected the distinction of Clerus et Laicus ; that the use of the 

 word priest by Upham, is generally inaccurate ; and that the Sangha 

 of the Buddhist triad ought to have been invariably rendered by 

 Rem us at into ' congregation of the faithful' or ' church,' and never into 

 'clergy' or 'priesthood.' Remusat indeed seems to consider (Observa- 

 tions, 28-9, and 32), these phrases as synonymous ; and yet the question 

 which their discrimination involves is one which, in respect to our own 

 religion, has been fiercely agitated for hundreds of years ; and still, by 

 the very shades of that discrimination, chiefly marks the subsisting 

 distinction between the various Churches of Christ ! 



Following the authority he has relied on, Mr. Upham was at liberty, 

 therefore, to adopt a sense which would consist with my interpretation 

 of phrases such as he alluded to, and which, of course, I found copiously 

 scattered over the works I consulted. I always rendered them advisedly 

 into English, so as to exclude the idea of a priesthood, because I had 

 previously satisfied myself, by separate inquiry and reflection, that that 

 cardinal tenet was repugnant to the genius of the creed, and repudiated 

 by its primitive teachers. This important point may have been wrongly 

 determined by me ; but assuredly the determination of it upon such 

 grounds as Mr. Upham's is perfectly futile. Such words as Arhanta 

 and Bandya, (which, by the way, are the correct forms of the Burmese 

 Rahatun and the Chinese Bonze,) no more necessarily mean, priest, clergy, 

 than do the Latin, fideles and milites, as applied to Christianity ; and as 

 for the word Sangha, it is indisputable that it does not mean literally 

 priest*, and that it does mean literally congregation. 

 * Observations, p. 29. 

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